Gonzaga Basketball entered the Battle 4 Atlantis Tournament as the prohibitive favorite, ranked No. 3 overall. However, the Bulldogs weren’t immune from the Feast Week mayhem that affected everyone in the top 25. They lost their opening-round game against West Virginia in overtime, moving over to the loser’s bracket.
The good news is that Gonzaga didn’t make it a losing skid, bouncing back to have convincing wins over Indiana and Davidson to finish in 5th place in the tournament. There’s plenty to take away from the event, both good and bad. Here’s a look at my three observations from the Bahamas.
Different scorers scored in Gonzaga’s three games, but the one consistent factor in the offense was Nembhard orchestrating it. He finished with 39 total assists in three games, including a season-high 14 in the win over Davidson. Through eight games, Nembhard leads the nation with 10.8 apg, which is good for first place in the entire nation. They still need him to be a scoring threat, evident by his 1/10 FG performance against WVU, but as long as the passing remains at a high level, it will be hard to beat them.
Through three games, Graham Ike averaged 12.3 ppg and 7.0 rpg, playing under 20 mpg overall. While technically efficient, Ike was saddled with foul trouble in two of the games, forcing backup Braden Huff to come in. When he’s on the court, few teams can stop him on defense., making the Bulldogs offense hard to stop. But he has to stay on the court, which has remained an issue throughout his college career.
Three ranked teams, Gonzaga, Indiana, and Arizona, came into the Battle 4 Atlantis. The Bulldogs went 2-1, while the Wildcats and Hoosiers went 1-2 and won’t be ranked by next week’s AP rankings.
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West Virginia was picked to finish in the bottom of the Big 12, but after beating Gonzaga and Arizona, there’s a chance they can be decent and not become a bad loss. As for Indiana and Davidson, time will tell if those wins will be assets to the resume. But based on the overall results, Gonzaga may need to beat Kentucky next weekend to feel good about its odds of getting a 1 seed in the Big Dance.
